New Assignment Platform

Dear Teams and Conferences,
The New England Rugby Referees Society has been working towards the transition to a new assignment platform for almost a year, and we are now ready to start usingWho’s the Ref (hereafter abbreviated WTR).
https://www.whostheref.com/us/index.php
From your perspective, this means some changes in procedures involving submitting schedules and updating team contacts.
Schedules
Each team is still responsible for providing a list of all home fixtures. One message with the schedule for the entire season is preferred, but individual entries are also acceptable.
Matches
For all matches, here is the required information. If there is a second side match that you would like covered by an assigned referee, please make that clear.
· Date
· Venue
· Start time (get this sorted early – the default is midnight)
· Opponent
Tournaments
For tournaments, including three-team round-robins:
· Date
· Venue
· Clarify 15s, 10s or 7s
· Number of fields
· Number of games (if 15s, also length of games)
· Start time and estimated finish time
· Complete list of participating teams must be provided before the event happens.
Please do not put the games in online at our old website. That is not being used for assigning. Any games or tournaments that have already been submitted on the old site have been transferred – there is no need to re-submit. Send your fixture list to the Director of Appointments at assignments@nerugbyrefs.org
Allow up to two weeks for a fixture to appear on our schedule, depending on the timing of bulk uploads. Anything with less lead time will require special handling and may incur an administrative fee in addition to the normal match fee. [Exceptions can be made for playoff games that cannot be pre-planned because they are waiting for league outcomes, and for re-scheduled games that were cancelled for reasons beyond a team’s control, such as weather.]
The fixtures that the Society knows about and will be assigning (if possible) are displayed on our old website. http://www.nerugbyrefs.org/schedules/full_schedule.cfm
Assignments
Assignment emails will be sent by WTR to the team contacts. It will then be the team’s responsibility to communicate with the referee to confirm the match, venue, time and provide an emergency phone contact, as well as jersey colors for both the host and the visitor.
Contacts
Reliable and timely communication is the key to making our relationship work well. That means the Society needs to update our club contact list frequently – ideally prior to the start of each season, but at a minimum once a year. We can accept a consolidated list from each conference or updates from individual clubs. We need, for each contact, name, phone and email. From each team:
· Primary contact
· One or (preferably) two secondary contacts
· AND a permanent billing contact
Thank you,
NERRS